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Fife 10: 25 – 31 January

And what if eternity is nothing but spiders?

That’s the question I’ve been mulling over recently. As regular readers will know, I have a bit of a thing for the fiction of Fyodor Dostoevsky, and I’ve been reading Crime and Punishment. One of the characters, a depraved, immoral landowner, who is also curiously (sym)pathetic, speculates about the afterlife, not as a traditional view of heaven, but as something much more mundane and limited:

“We always imagine eternity as something beyond our conception, something vast, vast! But why must it be vast? Instead of all that, what if it’s one little room, like a bath house in the country, black and grimy and spiders in every corner, and that’s all eternity is? I sometimes fancy it like that.”

I don’t know why I find this idea so disturbing. But I do. Perhaps because its very mundanity is sinister, like something out of a David Lynch movie, or the Red Room from Twin Peaks, where the evil Black Lodge was portrayed as a simple room with chairs and a red curtain, and the inhabitants just sit around, strangely disconnected (still makes me uneasy just thinking about it).

All in all, it’s been a strange sort of week. On Tuesday I met my business partner who has withdrawn from the business due to health reasons, which is a bit of a blow, though not unexpected. And on Wednesday I fulfilled a long-standing commitment by giving a talk to the archive students at Glasgow University on the state of archives in the UK (short version: “We’re doomed!”, preferably said in the voice of Pte. Frazer from Dad’s Army).

The talk went surprisingly well. Perhaps my happiest inspiration was ending with a slide from the James Bond film “You Only Live Twice”, showing the super-villain in characteristic pose stroking a white Persian cat. Warming to my theme, I suggested that the villain represented local government (bear with me here) and the cat, archives – and when things are going well, the world is being held to ransom, etc., then we are cosseted and protected. But when things go wrong – the ninjas are abseiling into the volcano and the grenades are going off, and the villain is escaping in his personal monorail car – then the cat is nowhere to be seen, it’s been jettisoned. So, in the good times, archives – like the cat – are cosseted and fed titbits; but when the money runs out… Well, you get the picture. At least the students had the grace to laugh at the jokes.

I am suffering from the sin of pride, even now, in fact, because afterwards several of the students told me it was the best talk they’d ever witnessed, and asked me how I’d gotten so good at it. (Time for a new hat – my swollen head won’t fit in the old ones now.)

So, the social whirl – together with the constant migraines – have slowed my gansey progress down, but as you will see, perseverance is slowly paying off… I think. Sometimes it’s hard to tell!

Part of my trouble is that the operation has left me with a daily migraine, until the congestion clears, so it’s sometimes hard to focus on a complex pattern. (As my daily prayer goes, “Give us this day our daily headache, and forgive us our petulance, as we plan revenge against those who take our parking spaces…”)

Another sourdough success this week. This time it’s a pain de campagne, French country bread, made with plain flour and a higher ratio of wholemeal and rye than usual. (It’s usually made with 10-15% wholemeal/rye blend, but this time I made it with 25% for a slightly rougher texture.) And a stollen, made as a swiss roll for a change. (The bread tends to separate as it rises, but you do get a swirl of marzipan with each mouthful, it’s not just a lump in the middle.)

I’ve also been experimenting with the Piadini, the Italian flatbread I made last week. They take 500g flour, but as an experiment I tried them with 250g flour and 250g mashed potatoes, to see if I could replicate my father’s wonderful potato (“tattie”) scones in a yeasted bread. It’s not as potato-y as I’d hoped, though it’s pretty good, so I may up the potato quotient next time. Meanwhile, for those of you old enough to remember hit songs of the 60s, it’s also given me the phrase “Itsy bitsy teenie weenie mashed potato Piadini.”

And what if eternity isn’t spiders after all? What if it’s knitting, but the needles keep breaking and the yarn is full of knots? And no matter how much you knit you never seem to make any progress? Oh. Hang on. Wait a minute…

Fife 9: 18 – 24 January

A nose, as Shakespeare almost said, by any other name would smell as sweet.

Nearly three weeks on from my septoplasty operation, and I can finally gauge how it all went. The infection’s gone, the painful swelling has responded to treatment, and my sense of taste and smell is pretty much back. (By the way, have you ever noticed how great stuff tastes? I read of one poor woman who bought a very expensive box of chocolates in advance, to cheer herself up after a septoplasty, then found she couldn’t taste any of them!).

And I am – this is actually quite exciting – able to blow my nose, albeit tentatively, just a gentle snuffle, without worrying about looking down to find most of my nose nestling in the handkerchief.

I’m not out of the woods yet. The inside of my nose is still very tender (hardly a surprise), I’m still very congested (I wake up every morning with a sore throat and a headache), and when I touch the inside of my nose I feel like a blind man running his fingers over a baby dragon. But it’s still very early days – I’m told that it can take up to a year for all the bits to settle down properly.

I’ve written up my diary of the operation and its aftermath, on the off-chance that it will be of use or interest to anyone thinking of having anything similar done – if you’re anything like me, you won’t know the half of it. (But, as ever, now it’s over, it doesn’t seem so bad…) You can read that here, if you wish.

I’m still finding it hard to get back into things – everything I was doing before the operation feels like it was being done by someone else (in some ways I feel like I’m taking over another person’s life, but their interests weren’t necessarily the same as mine).

In the same way that pregnant women are said to crave unusual foods – pilchards and ice cream, that sort of thing – I’ve had an inexplicable craving to listen to the music of Anton Bruckner. Bruckner wrote long, grand, noble symphonies (“cathedrals in sound” someone called them) with slow movements of an achingly profound, transcendent, shattering beauty. (Trust me on this. Fill the bath with scented foam, light some candles, close your eyes and lie back and listen to the adagio of his eighth or ninth symphonies. If you don’t emerge after half an hour determined to sell all your possessions and devote your life to good works I guarantee the shop will give you your money back.)

And while I’ve been listening to dear old Anton, I’ve been rustily getting my fingers back into the knitting habit, a whole two inches this week. The pattern makes better sense than I’d expected, from a knitting point of view, for all the knit-purl-knit-purl taradiddle that it contains. (Essentially, you have an elaborate pattern row followed by a mostly plain row, which makes it easier.) The diamond effect is starting to emerge nicely, too, an interesting reversal of the usual pattern.

At least my doppelganger and I seem to share a fondness for baking bread. For whatever reason – I suspect the warmer weather has a lot to do with it – I’ve had some notable sourdough success lately. Illustrated here is a couple of sourdough “granary” or malted flour loaves, moistened with a glug of olive oil to help it stay soft for longer.

I’ve also included my favourite bread of the moment, Piadini, or Italian flatbread. It’s basically a standard bread dough (the recipe calls for carbonated water, though I don’t know if it really makes a difference). After it’s risen once you divide it into 8 rounds and then cook them in a frying pan without any oil, like English muffins, pricking them all over with a fork to stop them swelling up with air pockets. You can either eat them warm, straight from the pan (my preference), or let them cool and then fold them over and fill them with whatever takes your fancy – tomatoes, cheese, felafel, you name it – like a sock puppet sandwich. And because you don’t have to worry about a second rise and baking time, you can start after breakfast and still have them ready for lunch.

In other words – now I’ve got my sense of taste back I mean to make the most of it…

Fife 8: 10 – 16 January

…and we’re back!

Many thanks for all the expressions of goodwill we received while I was convalescing, it was much appreciated.

Over Christmas I heard a radio announcer complaining that her husband had stubbed his toe on the stairs, and while hopping about howling with pain he’d snapped at her, “You can’t tell me childbirth is more painful than this!” She was still seething about it several days later….

Now, it has not escaped my attention that certain of my readers are of the female persuasion, so taking the above example as a cautionary tale – and bearing in mind that even as I type my brother is in hospital with a kidney stone – just about the most painful thing the human body can experience – I don’t want to overstate the case here. It’s all relative, of course.

But it was horrible! Really horrible! (There, I said it.)

I had a septoplasty operation, which straightens a deviated septum. Mine was very twisted – you could see it plainly sticking out of my left nostril – and not only interfered with my breathing, it may have contributed to my constant migraines and susceptibility to colds in recent years. Turns out I had a fracture up there as well. So it had to be fixed, really.

Ah, well. It’s over now. It’s early days yet, and I’m told it will take a few weeks and even months before it all settles down, but I’m cautiously optimistic. Once the side-effects (like the infection) wear off, things will get better.

One surreal moment was lying on the trolley in theatre with the needle in my hand, when the anaesthetist realised they didn’t know my height and weight to calculate the dose. So I told them, but I only know imperial and all their charts are metric. So picture a roomful of nurses and doctors frantically trying to convert 12.5 stone/5 feet 10 inches by mental arithmetic and coming up with at least three different answers, while trying to reassure me that everything was under control…

As I came round from the anaesthetic in the theatre it was just like being an infant again. A hospital bed resembles a crib (both have railings to stop you escaping) and you lie there helpless, flat on your back, while smiling superior women lean over and ask you incomprehensible questions (when I was a baby these took the form of “Who’s a big boy now?” and “Ooziwooziwoozi den?”; this time it was “Do you know who you are and why you’re here?” – questions I would struggle to answer at the best of times). Though I thought it was going a bit far when the nurse lifted my gown and blew on my tummy – no, wait, that’s a different fantasy… (Ahem.)

And here I should say a big thanks to Margaret, without whom the first few days would have been difficult, if not pretty much impossible. The third morning I was so out of it I couldn’t even sit up to put my pyjama jacket on. So I wouldn’t advise anyone to get this done without some support at home for a few days.

The highlight was getting the splint removed last Friday, a surprisingly large kidney-shaped piece of plastic which helps hold it all together. First the consultant cut the stitches and pulled them out – I’ve never had the sensation of something slithering from one side of my nose to the other from the inside before, one which gives you a whole new perspective on life – and then it was time for the splint itself. He gave me a pad of gauze to hold underneath my nose (“it might get a bit messy”) and then reached in with the forceps…

Well, for a second I thought he’d missed his aim and grabbed hold of my brain by mistake, because it felt like he was trying to pull the entire inside of my head out through one nostril. Then it was free and I was too busy trying to catch all the goo that came pouring out – think dormouse’s afterbirth – to worry about discomfort. But what a relief!

And so I find I’m still alive and have a life to pick up again, like an old neglected suit of clothes hanging in the cupboard which you wondered if you’d ever wear again.

Which brings us to the gansey. I’ve only got back to knitting this last couple of days, so there’s not been much progress – I thought I’d get lots done during the convalescent phase, but in fact I was more or less confined to bed for the whole of the first week (semi-conscious, sweating fits, chills and shivering fits, too tired to pick up a book, let alone read it, constant headaches – all pretty normal stuff, though, apparently), and even now I’m pacing myself. But I think you can start to see the pattern emerging – it’s a bit of a fiddle to knit, but the effect shows up rather nicely, I feel.

One good thing – while I was waiting for the consultant before the operation I managed to sort out the ending of my novel, and hastily scribbled down several pages of notes before they came to get me. So tomorrow, it’s back to work.

Anyway, time to go – I’ve got a hangnail which is catching on stuff. Talk about pain? Huh, tell me about it…

Fife: 3 – 9 January

No noticeable progress this week; your regular blogging service will resume next Monday.

As hoped and expected, Himself had the septoplasty operation last Wednesday and recovery is slow but going to plan – he’s effectively confined to bed with what he describes as a combination of a hangover, jet-lag and a migraine, and is planning a self-help book called “how to lose weight on a diet of blood and mucus” which should be a best-seller. Oh, and if anyone has the secret if time travel, he would like to know so he can go back in time and tell himself not to have the blasted operation in the first place.

I can’t imagine what it’s like to have your nose rearranged from the inside.  It’s certainly taken the fizz out of the gin, and no mistake.  Apart from short bursts of activity to sit over a steaming bowl to cleanse nasal passages, the rest of the time is spent prone on the bed.  Perhaps waiting for death, I haven’t asked.  There are occasionally brief episodes of lucidity, when the congestion clears.  Then the traffic jams up again, and clarity goes on holiday.  At night, sleep is only possible flat on his back, propped up, sporting a rather fetching white gauze pad – think reverse polar bear, but cuter.

Anaesthetically speaking, the op was a far greater success than the cataract ops – there was no post-op nausea or side-effects.  Aesthetically speaking, you’d never know he’d had an op.  The surgery was all where the likes of you and I can’t see it, in the dark dripping regions of the sinuses.  There’s even a splint up there, to keep everything on the straight and narrow.  That comes out Friday. Apparently the splint can be up to 4 in. long, but it’s a preferable alternative to yards of gauze packing . . . But progress has been steady; each day the breathing is slightly easier, the congestion slightly less, the oozing lighter . . .

So, hopefully, Gordon will be back next week, and thanks for all your get well wishes.

Margaret

Fife 5: 21 December 2010 – 2 January 2011

Let me start by wishing all of you a Happy New Year. Speaking personally, I’m delighted to see the back of 2010, which turned out to be a pig of a year, all things considered. So, metaphorically, I’ve taken 2010 out to the fields like an old and incontinent sheepdog and put it out of its misery. (It’s currently buried under the topiary in a pauper’s grave, and I can tell 2011 is already a little nervous, wondering what’s in store for it if it doesn’t perform well, especially when it sees me sharpening the kitchen knife and eyeing it thoughtfully.)

Snow and ice put paid to some of our Christmas plans, but we still managed a family post-Christmas in the Midlands with my parents, which was foggy but festive. And Santa didn’t forget us – I got some cds and books, including the Archbishop of Canterbury’s book on the theology underpinning the novels of Dostoevsky. I am open to bets how long this will remain unread despite my best intentions, and how far I’ll get before it’s back to Terry Pratchett…)

We stayed up to welcome in the new year, but learned our lesson after last year and watched the fireworks going off over Calton Hill from our back window. It was spectacular and wonderful, but, again, it was kind of short – less than 4 minutes, start to finish. Still, it’s the thought that counts (though in this case the thought was mostly, “Oh, is that it?”).

As you will see from the photos, I’ve started the pattern for the body of Margaret’s cardigan. We decided on a combination of a couple of Scottish patterns, recorded in Gladys Thompson and Michael Pearson, which caught Margaret’s eye.

One is the half-flag, a triangle which also appears in the splendid Mrs Laidlaw of Whitby’s pattern. This is 13 stitches wide, 11 for the pattern plus 2 plain stitches for the edges. The other is a diamond, and it’s a little unusual, and comes from Mrs Stevens of Cruden Bay (see Pearson, page 63). The diamond is knit in plain stitches, but is surrounded by moss stitches, instead of the other way round as is more common. It makes for a nice effect, though I’ll need to knit more of it to really bring it out, but it is pretty fiddly. (There’s a lot of counting to make sure the purls land on the right spot, and let’s be honest here, rows of knit-purl-knit-purl do rather slow you down. But then, to paraphrase a wise man talking about Wagner’s Parsifal, people in a hurry shouldn’t be knitting ganseys in the first place.) The diamond panels are 27 stitches wide, including a plain knit border stitch at either side, and the diamond is 9 stitches across at its widest point.

The 2 panels alternate around the body, 5 diamonds and 4 half-flags to each side, so that the centre of the front and back falls on a diamond. The panels are separated by a moss stitch delineator consisting of 3 stitches (purl-purl-purl on odd rows, purl-knit-purl on even rows). This blends in happily with the moss stitch of the diamonds. Oh, and the patterns have been tweaked to ensure that they each finish on the same row, to make it easier to keep track of repeats up the body.

The overall effect of the gansey will be like the Hebridean patterns, one set of patterns for the body, a central band of trellis or chevrons, and a third pattern set for the yoke. (The other patterns have yet to be finalised, but will probably consist of some combination of trees and cables.)

Finally, as we were home for Christmas Day, I thought it would be nice to bake some fresh bread and offer it to our neighbours for their Christmas lunches (there are 3 other flats below us on our stairwell). So I made “baguettes normal”, the easiest and quickest bread recipe I know, about 4 hours start to finish, but resulting in an authentic French crusty baguette. Wrapped steaming hot in a linen cloth we gave them 3 or 4 of these each. And given that the little girl downstairs gave us a bunch of cookies for Santa, it seemed a fair exchange. (Well, Santa didn’t seem to want them, and waste not want not.) The one on the right bears an uncanny resemblance to the spaceship from 2001: A Space Odyssey, which makes a pleasant change, given that they more often resemble the black monolith…